GravityView for event planners: How to Create a guest List

GravityView for event planners: How to create a guest list

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Guest List for Your Event

Written by Zack Katz

Last updated:

Categories GravityView

Tags ,

Do you use Gravity Forms to collect event registrations on your WordPress website? Do you want to display an event registration list on the front end?

With GravityView, you can do exactly that! 😎

GravityView extends Gravity Forms by allowing you to display Gravity Forms entries on the front end using several different layout options. Are you an event planner or party organizer? We wrote this post for you!

Here’s what we’re going to cover in this post:

  • Setting up a Form that lets guests RSVP to the event
  • Creating a View that displays all the guests coming to our event and then lets them edit their own entry.

Let’s get started!


Create the RSVP Form

First, let’s create a form that allows users to RSVP to the event. To do this, hover over Forms and click on New Form in your WordPress sidebar. Give your form a name, something like “RSVP to the Event.”

Then, add fields to your form using the Gravity Forms drag and drop form editor. For an event registration form, you’ll need the following fields.

  • Name
  • Paragraph Text – Rename this to “About Me”
  • File Upload – Rename this to “Photo”, type in “jpg, gif, png” for the Allowed filed, and limit the Maximum file size to 5MB.
  • Website

If you have other important information to collect – dietary preferences or T-Shirt size, for example – add a field for it.

Tip: Make the fields “Required” to make sure people fill them out!

Finally, add your new form to a page. If you’re using the Gutenberg editor, you can do this by clicking the ‘+’ button and adding a Gravity Forms block to your page.

The Gravity Forms Gutenberg block for WordPress

If you’re using a different page editor, you can add a Gravity Form to your website using a shortcode. Okay, here’s what our final form will look like:

Gravity Forms event registration form with three fields - Name, About Me and Photo

Create the View

GravityView allows you to create Views – This is how we’re going to display our Gravity Forms event registration list.

First, hover over Views and click New View. Give your View a title, for example, “RSVP List.” Note that this title won’t be displayed to users – it’s just for your internal use.

Then, select your form as the data source and choose a View type. GravityView All Access comes with five different layout types:

  • Table
  • List
  • DataTables
  • DIY
  • Maps

To learn more about each of the View types, check out this handy guide.

Choosing a View type in GravityView

Depending on the number of people attending our event, we may want to use either the Table View or the Listing View. Here’s how you can decide:

  • If we have many people attending the event, we want to use the Table View. This will just display each person’s basic information on the Multiple Entries page.
  • If we have only a few people attending the event and want to include their photo and other information on the Multiple Entries page, we should use the Listing View.

For this example, let’s use the Listing View. Now, we can start customizing our view by adding widgets and fields.

Widgets are tools that help users navigate your View – such as search bars or pagination links. Fields, on the other hand, correspond to the fields in your form and they display user-inputted values.

Let’s add a search bar at the top of our View. This will let people search through the guests to see if a particular person is coming. If you like, you can rename it to say “Search through party guests”.

The top widgets area in the GravityView View editor

Below our entries, let’s add the Page Links and Show Pagination Info widgets. The former will display links for each page of people, while the latter will show how many people are on the current page (for example, Showing 1-50 of 200.)

The bottom widgets area in the GravityView View editor

Now, let’s add the entry fields.

  • Under Listing Title, add the Name field
  • Under Subheading, add the Website field
  • Under Image, add the Photo field
  • Finally, under Other Fields, add the About Me field

Note: Click on the gear icon next to a field to bring up the Field Settings. This allows you to add custom labels to your fields (or hide the labels altogether), change the visibility settings, and more.

The Entries Fields area in the GravityView View editor

When you’re done configuring your View, click Publish. Now you can add it to a page or post on your website using the embed shortcode.

The GravityView embed shortcode in WordPress

Copy and paste the shortcode into your page and don’t forget to give it a title. Okay, here’s what our Gravity Forms event registration list looks like on the front end:

Gravity Forms event registration list on the front end

It’s looking good! As the last step, let’s allow users to edit their own entries. To do this, edit your View and scroll down to the Settings box. Next, click on the tab that says “Edit Entry” and check the box that says “Allow User Edit”.

If you want to re-approve entries after they’ve been edited, check the box that says “Unapproved Entries After Edit”.

The GravityView Setting box, showing the "Allow User Edit" checkbox under the "Edit Entry" tab.

If you’re hosting a private event and you don’t want the guest list to be made available to the public, you can restrict your View based on login status or user role. For a comprehensive guide on how to do this, read our post GravityView: Restricting a View by Login Status or User Role.

And that’s it! You now have a guest list for an event, powered by Gravity Forms entries, and displayed with GravityView.

Displaying a Gravity Forms Event Registration List: Final Thoughts

Gravity Forms is perfect for collecting event registrations but it doesn’t allow you to display that information on the front end. GravityView solves this problem by allowing you to display events on your website.

In this post, we showed you how to create an event registration list using GravityView. To learn more about displaying Gravity Forms entries, check out more content on our blog!

Helpful tips right in your inbox.

Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter for tips, special offers, and more!

Helpful tips right in your inbox.

Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter for tips, special offers, and more!